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Owing to Moma Markovich’s prolific output and the vagaries of the provincial bureaucracy, gathering the pieces for the “Footpaths to Freeways” exhibit was no small feat.

Lani Wilson, curator of the Government of Ontario Art Collection at the Archives of Ontario, poses with some of the paintings by Moma Markovich now on exhibit at the John B. Aird Gallery in Toronto. (Andrew Lahodynskyj)

The Footpaths to Freeways exhibit on display at the John B. Aird Gallery in Toronto features "Futurama" by the late Moma Markovich, who worked for the Ontario Ministry of Transportation. (Andrew Lahodynskyj)

One of the paintings by Moma Markovich features a scene from the old Howe Island Ferry on Hwy. 579 to the Little Pic River Bridge on the north shore of Lake Superior. (Andrew Lahodynskyj)

When artist Moma Markovich retired from the Ontario Ministry of Transportation in 1970, one friend said his paintings would be remembered longer than some of the provincial highways and byways they portrayed.

The observation was prescient.

And the story of what has happened over the last four decades to the late artist’s work — now collected into a new exhibit to mark the ministry’s centennial — is almost as intriguing as the life Markovich lived before coming to Canada.

Owing to Markovich’s prolific output and the vagaries of the provincial bureaucracy, gathering the pieces for the “Footpaths to Freeways” exhibit was no small feat, said Lani Wilson, curator of the Government of Ontario Art Collection at the Archives of Ontario.

First, the paintings had to be located. Some had been given as presents to visiting premiers or retirement gifts to ministry staffers. Some had apparently been arbitrarily seconded to hang in private homes. Some ended up in antique stores and storerooms.

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Once found, many — including those that had grown dingy hanging in ministry offices — had to be restored.

“Being done in the ’60s and ’70s, they were starting to age and they were deteriorating and a lot of them did need conservation,” Wilson said.

More than 100 have been recovered, cleaned, conserved, reframed and digitized — a collection celebrating both the engineering achievements and the natural beauty of the province preserved for future generations.

During his career, Markovich — the very picture of an artist in his French chapeau, eating grapes while he worked — became both a legend and an institution at the ministry.

He was born in Belgrade, Serbia, in 1902 and graduated from art school in Paris. During the Second World War, he escaped a Nazi work camp in Austria.

He arrived in Canada in 1951 and continued to work as an artist, but was hired by what was then the Department of Highways as a draftsman. He soon began painting artistic renderings of transportation infrastructure across Ontario. Minister of Government Services Marie-France Lalonde told the exhibit’s official opening this week that Markovich’s paintings were “hidden treasures” that produced feelings “of happiness and nostalgia” for a booming era of expansion and possibility.

During his career, Markovich created almost 200 works. After retiring from the ministry, he created a series of 55 more for the Ministry of Natural Resources. He died in 1977 at age 75.

The paintings offer a journey in place and time.

They feature scenes from the old Howe Island Ferry on Hwy. 579 in northern Ontario to the Little Pic River Bridge on the north shore of Lake Superior. They travel back to Ontario’s infrastructure beginnings of plank and corduroy roads serving ox carts and horse teams.

The main focus is the booming Ontario of the 1960s and ’70s, back before the Burlington Skyway had been twinned and as the QEW monument near St. Catharines was being built.

Carl Hennum, who retired as an assistant deputy minister with MTO in 2006 after a 40-year career, told the Star it probably “wasn’t kosher” that the paintings had been given as gifts. And it was certainly inconvenient that some retirees moved across the country to enjoy their golden years “and took the paintings with them.”

“One we got from an antique store in Kingston. One of our regional directors just happened to be in the store and noticed it, so they did purchase it,” he said. Lani Wilson, the curator, said she was probably most excited to recover the painting of the Little Pic River Bridge — the largest in the collection.

She had seen it in a small photograph of poor quality, “probably taken in the 1970s,” and thought “that would be kind of neat to get.”

Then she heard from MTO’s bloodhound on the case, Tara Grabell, who’d tracked it down in a ministry regional office storeroom in Thunder Bay.

“Lo and behold, she said, ‘I think I know where that one is.’ That was a really lucky find.”

The free “Footpaths to Freeways” exhibit is located in the John B. Aird Gallery at 900 Bay St., open weekdays from 10 a.m.-6 p.m. until Oct. 14.

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